Gambling Books

An intellectually stimulating analysis of the historical role of gambling in American Indian culture and literature that is juxtaposed against the current internal tribal debates about the long term impact of modern high-stakes gambling operations. It also contrasts the taken-for-granted gamble of the American capitalist that benefits the individual with modern tribal gambling that benefits the community. At the same time, the book presents a compelling account of one tribes struggle to survive against colonial genecide followed by 300 years of an intransigent American legal system and the important role that individuals made in finally achieving some justice.

Book Contents Include: Mnemonics as applied to card Sharping, Lane Method for Calculated Cuts, Culls and Stocks, Utility Holding Positions, Strategic Communication Management, Utilizing secret accomplices, Cull and Stock error rate analysis, Deducing envirnmental factors, Misc. card sleights, Defence mechanisms, Troubleshooting a poker game, Defensive game playing habits and style

the best book written on the subject. filled with hundreds of great photographs and fascinating text on poker, pharo, ivory chips,playing cards etc.

GAMBLING FOR GOOD MAIL is a compelling story of one woman's search for her true identity and the strength needed to live an authentic life. You could call it a coming-of-age story, but the heroine, Felicia Wood, has long passed the age of reason: she's a ripe 43.

Felicia has had a sad and difficult childhood, to the point where she'll do anything to avoid the possibility of pain. She seems stuck in her self-image as a cheerleader and remains marooned emotionally in her high-school persona when she was cute and loved. She's just a "girl who wants to have fun" and be rewarded with pleasant surprises. A naïve, sexually uninhibited air-head, she trusts that something will turn up to rescue her from her difficulties. She finds lame excuses to avoid introspection, to feel sorrow, to discover why it is that her fourth husband just left her, as did the three before him.

We follow Felicia as she tries to justify her addiction to "good mail": cheap junk from catalogs which have taken over her house and cleaned out her bank account. Faced with the necessity of making it financially on her own, Felicia refuses to return to nursing because it is too depressing when your patients die. She enjoys a stint selling time-shares because it's so jolly when she makes a sale, but she cannot make a living doing it.

Her luck and her life change with the arrival of her niece, Caitland, who pays rent so Felicia, in turn, can pay her mortgage. Caitland has her own deep emotional problems and struggles to hold on to a fragile equilibrium. Felicia admires her maturity. The two women are good for each other, but then everything falls apart after an unjustified, impulsive outburst from Felicia sends Caitland back into therapy.

At that point, Felicia begins to learn that living on the surface and in denial brings only more pain. Her struggle toward self-knowledge and self-acceptance is anything but smooth, tribulations abound, but in the end, she finds happiness.

You would think that such a serious theme would be written in a serious tone. Such is not the case: the book is a comic, hearty, joyful romp through the New-Age culture of Southern California, serving up a mix of religion, self-help groups, artsy snobs, an Italian Count gigolo and, incredibly, soft-sculpture dolls which lead to Felicia's redemption.

Evelyn Cole is a master of dialog. She sprinkles her book with comparisons that take your breath away, such as this description of a screechy woman: "her voice was worse than the sound of two Styrofoam cups doing it". Gambling for Good Mail is a pleasure to read. The serious lessons it teaches go down easy sprinkled with the sugar of rollicking good humor.

Evelynn Cole nailed the good mail. She tells of the down and dirty adventures of her protagonist of whom the reader gets to know as well as a good sister or maybe a bad sister. Ms. Cole writes about small and even large as life stuff. Who would conceive of such a big thing as a real cow preserved by taxidermy. She takes us on a trip away from the mundane and far outside the box. A great read for all who dare to go there.

We used this book to help fight off a casino planned for our small town, and we won. Grinols is an economist and the expert on casino economics. He points out that for every $1 that comes into the area from a casino, $3 goes out in unforseen economic costs. Casinos are not sustainable economic development. They are a regressive tax, have very high social costs, and as Warren Buffett said, "government shouldn't be in the business of making losers of its citizens".

This study of gambling and everyday life in Chania, Crete, is an outstanding example of how anthropological ethnography can contribute to larger debates in the social sciences while remaining accessible and engaging to the casual reader. The author's intellectual objective is to shed light on reigning theories of risk and indeterminacy by exploring in finely grained detail how risk is operative and is experienced, interpreted and strategized against/upon by social actors in real life. The setting of the study is ideal for this purpose, as social life in this town is organized for many around the playing, practice and performance of gambling. A range of useful and non-jargony conceptual tools for capturing the experience of uncertainty are introduced (performative indeterminacy, instrumental nonchalance, e.g.), which heighten the feeling that true insight is occurring here. In fact, it is one of the impressive achievements of this book, that it manages to engage the serious scholar in ongoing disciplinary debates (about risk theory, social poetics, modernity and the state) while remaining a perfectly charming read for the nonspecialist.

This book begins in a very poor district of a city in England during the Industrial Revolution. The division between classes is very notorious. I have to admit that I found myself struggling for the first 100 pages or so, but then afterwards I was hooked. I am not to unveil the main trama but this is the story of a man that fights his way up the slums (with some help) and at this point the author provides us with many surprises, up until the end of the book. Things that had been building up in the 100 previous pages finally start falling together in a carefully laid out fashion, and a very romantic way. The feelings are intense.

Rory Connor is a gambling man plain and simple. Born into a poor family, even his mum knows that someday he will make something of himself. He collects rents from the local habitants for the local gentry. The patriarch dies, leaving his plain, spinster daughter to carry on the family business.

Rory is pressed to find gambling games that will afford him more cash in order to buy a house for his upcoming marriage and a small business venture for his brother. Rory pilfers a small amount of cash to enter a fixed game with the Pitte brothers, a local gang. A mistake that cost him Rory his conscious as a close friend goes to jail for a year for thievery Rory committed. He manages to win a large amount of money but is badly beaten and left for dead.

While recuperating he is visited by his fiancé and also Charlotte Kean, the lady of the manor. It's easy to see that she is smitten with him and continues to engage him in his rent collector's role.

He marries his intended but is plagued with guilt over his misdeed and confesses during a nightmare. His new wife is furious at what he's done and leaves him to return to her family. She is then commissioned by the mistress she works for to accompany their family on sea voyage, where they are all lost at sea. While mourning is loss, a year goes by and Rory is promoted to bookkeeping by Charlotte.

Finally no longer able to contain her affections for Rory, Charlotte makes propositions him with an offer of marriage--in name only. He will not be required to fill his marital duties and will in fact reside in his own apartments.
Rory of course makes her his wife in every way, giving her a happiness that she could only dream of.

Charlotte has been busy collecting evidence against the Pitte brothers and a crew of malcontents that plague the docks, and in fact were responsible for beating Rory and other crimes against the local humanity.

Though everyone is whispering about Rory's marriage to Charlotte, he finds himself falling in love with his plain, gentle wife. She informs him that she is with child, and he is beyond happy--until he learns that his first wife has returned, a shell of her former beautiful self, and bitter when she finds out that he has remarried.
She threatens to expose him even as Rory declares to her that he loves his new wife and that she is expecting.

The Pitte brother's burn Rory's brother's business and redemption is satisfied when Rory enters the burning building to save him. With his body on fire, he manages to save his sibling, but incurs fatal burns and survives long enough to declare his love once more to charlotte.

Catherine Cooks tells stories the way we author's today are no longer allowed to. Always filled with passion, and redemption, Catherine always showed the cruelty as well as the beauty in the lives of those who weren't always rich and powerful. Her stories includes their downfall, as well as their redeeming qualities. As with most of her books, I highly recommend THE GAMBLING MAN.

This is a book that if you love westerns you will not be disappointed in. Kent Conwell has done it again. I know when I buy his books that I will cherish them always. Mr. Conwell blends a story that touches the heart and leaves it in your mind upon wakening. He is an excellent writer.
What can I say? If you love westerns by Kent Conwell, you will love his latest, The Gambling Man.
He writes with a man who cares about all the characters in his books. The way Mage meets up with Joe and brings him into his fold touched my heart. You can't go wrong in reading a book by Mr. Conwell. You can't help but fall in love with the characters of Mage, Rachel, William, Robert, Joe, and the whole town people. To find a town that sticks together when a sickness strikes, and children, who want to protect their parent's home when things get rough, Mr. Conwell always delivers a warm story to his many writings. Not only that, he knows when to blend a little humor and bring out laughter as you turn some of the pages. The Gambling Man deserves 2 thumbs up and ten stars. It is truly a wonderful addition of books by Kent Conwell. I always know that when he has a new one on the market and I buy it, it will be great. This one was great! Never a disappointment in any book by Mr. Conwell.

This book discusses a very intriguing argument that technically and non-technically inclined people will find fascinating. The delicate topic of the existence of God is handled in a way that no one will find offensive.